CIOs must embrace mobility or be swept aside: IDC

CIOs in the Asia Pacific face being “swept aside” if they ignore mobility as an issue in the enterprise, IDC has claimed.

The research group released its CIO Innovation Survey and IDC’s associate vice president of end user and mobility research, Tim Dillon, said the evolution of mobility was forcing local CIOs to keep up with developments in the mobile space.

“Organisations that continue to take enterprise mobility for granted will be swept aside in the new environment,” he said.

New mobile devices and applications constitute the next seismic shift

“Today, we’re seeing what we could call a ‘perfect storm’ created by the evolution of different areas of technology combining to fundamentally, and drastically change how organisations can use enterprise mobility to support business goals and strategies.

“If previous IT turning points for industry have been the move from mainframes to desktops and the growth of Internet, then new mobile devices and applications will constitute the next seismic shift.”

Dillon said the evolution of IT in the workplace is also blurring the lines between the work and home lives of staff members; causing security issues to plague the sector.

“As enterprise applications become mobile, the boundaries of the enterprise become extended and blurred,” he said.

“With the constant evolution in devices and applications that tap into the core enterprise systems, all systems become increasingly vulnerable to the acts of negligent users and malicious attacks - companies will need to pair 'pervasive mobility' with 'ubiquitous security’.”

Revealing the results of IDC’s CIO Forecast for Management Survey at the CIO Summit in Sydney last month, Dillon said mobility has increased dramatically as a priority for Australian CIOs, in the last 12 months.

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